Pay Rent with a Credit Card – Plastiq / RadPad

I love hearing the endless drone of people complaining how renting is throwing money down the drain. We here at Thrifty Traveler are huge fans of renting.

Reasons why renting is awesome:

Flexibility – Move whenever you want

Liquidity – Don’t have to throw down a huge down payment

House upkeep and filling a house full of furniture is expensive

Building equity in a house is overrated – Many people move in less than 7 years and have to pay 6% in fees for a realtor, so there goes your “equity”

You can now pay your rent with your credit card! (with a 2.5% fee of course)

Yes that’s right earlier this year RadPad and Plastiq began offering credit card payments for rent. The process is very simple and straightforward. Simply go to either website and sign-up. Then you verify your email and you’re ready to send payments. Either company will then mail out a paper check.

There is no fee for debit card transactions of up to $5,000, but there is a 2.5% fee for credit cards. Plastiq offers the same 2.5% rate but their service will mail payments for everything from rent to utilities, basically anything. I tested Plastiq out by sending a payment to Mrs. TT and it was incredibly easy.

At first, I was turned off by the 2.5% fee but then I thought about when this might actually be worth it. I always recommend working towards earning some sort of credit card bonus, and this method is incredibly easy to help you hit those bonus spending requirements.

So let’s say your rent is $1500, which results in a fee of $37.50. Now suppose you were working on earning a 30k sign-up bonus for my favorite Starwood Preferred Guest card. Paying rent for two months would get you the welcome offer bonus for a low cost of $75 total. 30k Starwood Points are worth at least $400 so this would definitely be worth it. I would not recommend using RadPad or Plastiq for normal everyday points, but for welcome offer bonuses, it could be worth it.

I’d recommend RadPad or Plastiq for use only when working towards credit card sign-up bonuses. It helps cardholders get closer to the minimum spending required without having to buy things they don’t need and rack up credit card debt. Both are simple and easy to use, and will help renters get more value out of their rental payments.

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